Towards HRI of Everyday Life: Human Lived Experiences with Social Robots

Abstract

As the HRI field evolves, the way we understand, and study human-robot interaction also inevitably changes. We argue here that there has been a gradual shift in HRI research from investigating a concept of human-robot 'interaction' towards that of 'experience'. This includes User Experience (UX) approaches in the first place, but also those perspectives that begin to go beyond mere usability and optimization toward meaningful social interactions and social experiences. This paper addresses the shift in question from a sociological perspective and proposes to bring it even further to include a systematic study of human 'lived experiences' taking place in the community contexts. The ultimate goal is to facilitate theoretical and methodological developments needed to systematically address and pursue research on the 'HRI of Everyday Life'.